Hasta La Gadget!

A report from Business Insider earlier today claimed that Barnes & Noble had eliminated its Nook hardware engineering staff in its entirety. Barnes & Noble has confirmed to TechCrunch that there were “job eliminations across the organization,” but stressed that they have not in fact eliminated their hardware division as first reported.

Nook spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating provided the following statement from the company to explain the current situation and recent organizational changes:

We’ve been very clear about our focus on rationalizing the NOOK business and positioning it for future success and value creation.  As we’ve aligned NOOK’s cost structure with business realities, staffing levels in certain areas of our organization have changed, leading to some job eliminations.  We’re not going to comment specifically on those eliminations.  We believe we have a strong management team in place at NOOK, having recruited significant new talent.  The new NOOK management team is focused on managing the business efficiently so that it becomes financially strong while at the same time aggressively moving to drive revenue growth.

The Nook business hasn’t been doing well for a long time, and the unit’s revenue dropped 32.3 percent year-over-year last fiscal quarter. There have been multiple rumors about B&N considering buyers for the Nook business, but so far, it seems to remain committed to the division despite its declining fortunes.

Sony seems to be intent on extricating itself from the e-book market, where few companies have seemed to be able to weaken the Amazon stranglehold. It recently announced it was shutting down its e-book market in the U.S. and Canada, and moving existing users to Kobo. Nook remains in the game for now, but players are dropping like flies, so who knows how much longer that will remain true.

Sony is calling it quits in the e-book platform market, the company announced today (via Engadget). The move isn’t entirely unexpected: Sony has always occupied a relatively small portion of the market compared to the big kid on the block Amazon. And in light of recent revenue figures, and the decision to cut the much more recognizable VAIO brand, absolutely no one should be shocked by this decision.

The Reader digital storefront for purchasing e-book titles will be shut down as of next month in the U.S. and Canada. Owners of Sony Readers (I’m looking at you, dad) in those countries shouldn’t be worried about what happens to all their purchases, since Sony is generously migrating accounts and existing libraries intact to Kobo, which works on iOS and Android devices as well as Android hardware. The Kobo Android now will also ship pre-installed on Xperia devices as part of the arrangement.

Sony has yet to reveal exactly how users can switch their content over, but they’ll be sending an email to Reader account holders to detail the process ahead of the projected end of March dead date for the Reader store.

As for Reader hardware, it appears to have been doomed as far back as October last year, at least for the U.S. market, when the company removed the Reader section from its website entirely and listed existing models as discontinued. Moving e-book sales to a partner is probably a smart move, given its existing decision to pull away from that category of devices.

E Ink has come up with some pretty interesting displays in the past, and this time around, we have a new kind of screen technology from the folks over at E Ink that they call Fina. Fina will rely on technology which makes use of an extremely thin glass substrate which will supposedly end up eventually in displays that measure less than 50% where thickness and weight are concerned, especially when one compares it to “an equivalent glass-based TFT.”

In the press release (which you can read by following the link below), the Fina would be ideal for implementation in the PocketBook CAD Reader. This PocketBook CAD Reader happens to be a spanking new 13.3-inch device, which also happens to be the very first device that appears with Fina technology underneath the hood. Apart from that, the PocketBook CAD Reader will also arrive with a dual-core 1GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal memory and Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich as the operating system of choice. It does not seem as though the PocketBook CAD Reader will make its way to formal sales channels anytime soon, since the main reason of its existence would be to display drawings from Autocad. After all, it has been declared to see action on construction sites instead of in everyday situations. [Press Release]

E Ink Introduces Fina E-Reader original content from Ubergizmo.

Amazon only just released a new Kindle Paperwhite e-reader two months ago, but we’re already hearing rumors that a newer model is on the way. According to a new report from TechCrunch, the new version, to be released in early Q2 of next year, will boast a sharper 300-pixel-per-inch screen, allowing it to better compete with models like the Kobo Aura, which has a 265-ppi screen. (Not that Kobo’s represents much of a threat to Amazon’s book-selling empire.) Also it’s worth noting that E Ink makes the displays for basically all these e-readers, so it seems unlikely that Amazon would hold an exclusive on a 300-ppi panel — at least not for long.

Additionally, TechCrunch claims the new Paperwhite will have a lighter design that mimics the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets, with chamfered edges, a rear power button and a glass screen that sits flush with the bezels. The device is also rumored to have haptic feedback along the edges, which will give vibrating feedback when you do things like move to the next page. There’s no big software update planned, apparently, although Amazon is said to be working on a new custom font that’s more conducive to marathon reading sessions. We suppose if this report is true, all will be revealed over the coming months — hopefully those of you who just bought a new Paperwhite won’t be too cheesed off by the timing.

Filed under: Amazon

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Source: TechCrunch

A tablet for readers has always been a tricky proposition. For starters, the manufacturers that have attempted to create such a thing also make dedicated e-readers — devices with longer battery life and screens designed to make text look as much like print as possible. Barnes & Noble has given the category a shot with its Nook Tablets, though there are lingering questions as to whether that line will even survive. Amazon, meanwhile, has gone the opposite route, with reading representing just one of many features. Kobo’s latest readers see the company doubling down on reading, with a trio of tablets built around a reading core.

The Arc 10HD is the top-of-the-line model, a slate that doesn’t skimp on the specs (or price, for that matter, at $400). Most notably, it maintains a clear focus, promising to be (in Kobo’s own PR speak) “the best 10-inch HD tablet for readers.” For Kobo, that means loading up on book-centric features, including one that turns off all of those tablety distractions so you can just read. What, precisely, does it mean to be “the best 10-inch HD tablet for readers”? Does Kobo even deserve that distinction? Most importantly, is it a category within a category that really needs to exist in the first place?

Filed under: Tablets

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